Malala Yousafzai gives a speech after receiving the RAW in WAR Anna Politkovskaya Award at the Southbank Centre in central London on October 4, 2013. (AFP Photo / Justin Tallis) / AFP

Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teen shot by the Taliban in 2012 for campaigning for girls' schooling, received a human rights award named after the slain Russian journalist, Anna Politkovskaya.

The group RAW (Reach All Women) in War said Yousafzai had been
chosen for the Anna Politkovskaya Award “for her courage to
speak out when nobody else dared,” for giving a voice to many
women and girls and for promoting female education.

The 16-year-old was presented with the award in London on Friday,
nearly seven years after the Russian investigative journalist was
shot dead in the elevator of her apartment building on Oct 7,
2006.

Malala said she hoped she could be as courageous as Politkovskaya was.

“I am extremely proud to have been chosen to receive an award,
which bears her name and hope that I may be as brave as she
was,” AFP cites her as saying.

The award was presented by Nicholas Winton, now 104, who was
dubbed the ‘British Schindler’ for his role in saving the lives
of more than 600 Jewish children from Nazi-occupied
Czechoslovakia in 1939.

Malala is among the favorites for the Nobel Peace Prize, which
will be announced on October 11. She has also been shortlisted
for the European Parliament's prestigious Sakharov human rights
prize, named after the Soviet nuclear physicist, dissident, and
human rights activist Andrei Sakharov.

On 9 October 2012, Yousafzai was shot in the head and neck in an
assassination attempt by Taliban gunmen while returning home on a
school bus.

She incited the ire of the militant group after becoming an
internationally publicized advocate for female education. The
shooting sparked fierce condemnation at home and abroad.

Malala currently attends school in Birmingham, where she was
initially flown to receive medical treatment following the
shooting.

Her autobiography, ‘I Am Malala’ is set to be published in the US
and UK on Tuesday, the first anniversary of the attack.

RAW in WAR first started giving out the Anna Politkovskaya Award
in 2007 to mark the anniversary of her death and “to honor Anna
and other women like her in the world.”

The first recipient of the award was Natalya Estemirova, a human rights activist who
had actively worked with Politkovskaya in documenting human
rights abuses in Chechnya.

On July 15, 2009 Estemirova was abducted near her home in Grozny,
Chechnya. Later that day, her bullet-riddled body was found in
the neighboring republic of Ingushetia.